Just as Sam Gagner was in the middle of putting up his Gretzky record-tieing eight points against the Chicago Blackhawks, TSN analyst Darren Dreger referred to the numerous …

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Sam Gagner scores eight points vs. Chicago

Best thing I’ve seen on TV all year: Sam Gagner’s big night

Just as Sam Gagner was in the middle of putting up his Gretzky record-tieing eight points against the Chicago Blackhawks, TSN analyst Darren Dreger referred to the numerous trade rumours involving Gagner and said, “If (the Oilers) are showcasing him, then he’s selling it as hard as he can.”

Personally, I don’t think the Oilers have been “show-casing” Gagner in particular, though almost every player on the team, save for the three phenoms, could be traded for the right price, I’m sure. But Gagner has played with Taylor Hall and Jordan Eberle, and other good linemates, any number of times this year. Oilers coach Tom Renney likely moved to that unit to see if he could get something started. The coach is, after all, hard at work here trying to win a few games and save his job.

Indeed, the Oilers have been hoping for this kind of break-out game from Gagner for some time. Until now, he had failed to raise his game with Ryan Nugent-Hopkins out. But better late than never isn’t just an old saying, it’s also got some truth to it.

Now that Gagner’s big game has come, perhaps all the talk of trading Gagner will fade a bit. He can be a Top Six forward on the Oilers if he puts his mind to it, as we saw against the Blackhawks.

By the way, when it comes to Sam Gagner’s Neilson scoring chances plus/minus on the night, he contributed to ten scoring chances at even strength, one on the power play. Not one of his contributions came in the first, when he was on a line with Jordan Eberle and Philipe Cornet. That same period, Shawn Horcoff, Taylor Hall and Ales Hemsky were eaten alive by Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane, the Oilers making mistakes on six scoring chances against. That’s ghastly.

Oilers coach Tom Renney mixed things up in the second, putting Hall with Eberle and Gagner. Not a bad move, it would seem.

Gagner certainly made the most of the chances that came his way. In a dozen or so other games, Oilers players have had that many chances, but some days you eat the bear. Gagner swallowed him whole. The kid earned himself a nickname: “Sudden” Sam.

In his own end, he didn’t make one mistake that led to a scoring chance against.

This just in: former NHL goalie and TSN analyst Darren Pang on the potential of Oilers goalie Devan Dubnyk: “I did a poll of four NHL GMs about Devan …

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Devan Dubnyk, Edmonton Oilers

Pang’s assessment is a fair comment based on Dubnyk’s save percentage

This just in: former NHL goalie and TSN analyst Darren Pang on the potential of Oilers goalie Devan Dubnyk: “I did a poll of four NHL GMs about Devan Dubnyk and asked them what they thought his upside would be as a #1 goaltender. The answer coming back is: No. And that’s based on his lack of lateral movement. He’s a competitor, he’s working hard, he’s winning over his teammates but at this particular point, no, not a #1 goaltender.

“I would say there’s at least five or six goaltenders in the same age group who have got more upside as a number one.”

Of the goalies who are around Dubnyk’s same age (26 or younger), six of them — Brian Elliott, 26, Ondrej Pavelec, 24, Carey Price, 24, Jhonas Enroth, 23, Corey Schneider, 25 and Jonathan Quick, 26, — have better save percentages than Dubnyk’s .911.

Last year, 24 NHL goalies had a better save percentage than Dubnyk’s .916.

When it comes to those who were the same age as Dubnyk, seven of them — Schneider, Price, Quick, Al Montoya, 26, Semyon Varlamov, 23, James Reimer, 23, Tuuka Rask, 24 — had better save percentages.

So it’s not in any way outrageous to suggest that five or six goalies the same age as Dubnyk are performing at a higher level than him. It’s bang on. At the very least, you’d have to say Schneider, Quick and Price are ahead of him, as they had better save percentages two years in a row.

I’m not so sure about Dubnyk’s lack of lateral movement being the issue. Instead, it’s evident that sometimes he plays too far back in his net, so he’s not out far enough to get the right angle on a shooter. Perhaps with superior reflexes he could make up for playing as far back in the net as he sometimes does. That said, if his positioning improved, that might do the trick as well, and that would be Dubnyk’s best hope at his age, as I doubt he’s going to get sharper reflexes than he possesses.

Pang isn’t being harsh in his assessment of Dubnyk right now. It’s a fair one.

Groundhog Day brings a new/old challenge to the mildly-resurgent Edmonton Oilers. The Chicago Blackhawks are coming to town, a team which until very recently hung a long and convincing series of whippings on the Oilers right in their own barn.

The Oilers enter February on a bit of a roll, riding a three-game regulationunbeaten** streak, and against some pretty decent teams to boot. (**Terminology approved by The New NHL) The Hawks meanwhile are on a couple of losing streaks. They are winless in their last three, having dropped a home-and-home to Nashville before the break, then falling in overtime game in Vancouver two nights ago, and find themselves a surprising fourth in the ultra-competitive Central Division. They’ve also lost their last two games to the Oilers, including a 9-2 embarrassment their last visit to Rexall Place. I expect to see a motivated Chicago team tonight, mind you I said the same a month ago today. That was the night the Oilers lost Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Tom Gilbert, but still managed to beat the Hawks. Somehow.

RNH and Gilbert remain out of the line-up for the Oilers, though both are getting close to returning, as is Cam Barker. For now the Oil will go with the same line-up that beat Colorado on Tuesday, Oilers’ first regulation win since that night in United Centre. Devan Dubnyk gets his fourth straight start between the pipes, while defence pairings and line combos remain unchanged.

]]>http://blogs.edmontonjournal.com/2012/02/02/game-51-live-chat-oilers-v-blackhawks/feed/0brucemccurdy460cultofhockey_blog_bannerThe entrepreneurial mothers of Edmontonhttp://blogs.edmontonjournal.com/2012/02/02/the-entrepreneurial-mothers-of-edmonton/
http://blogs.edmontonjournal.com/2012/02/02/the-entrepreneurial-mothers-of-edmonton/#commentsFri, 03 Feb 2012 00:05:57 +0000http://blogs.edmontonjournal.com/?p=107069Edmonton gave birth to a new type of businessperson over the last few years, according to Connie Peters: the entrepreneurial mother. The Internet, says Peters, who runsthreebusinesses while raising her three young daughters, lets moms easily nurture business …]]>Edmonton gave birth to a new type of businessperson over the last few years, according to Connie Peters: the entrepreneurial mother. The Internet, says Peters, who runsthreebusinesses while raising her three young daughters, lets moms easily nurture business ideas and children simultaneously.

“Moms are looking for the balance between work and taking care of their children,” she says. “The Internet has allowed us to do that.” She puts the number of entrepreneurial moms in Edmonton in the hundreds.

And she thinks they need guidance. Thus, Entrepreneur Mom Now, an online magazine that combines the appeal of friendly advice for women with young children and commercial aspirations with the primal force of imperative language.

(My diseased mind invariably conjures comparisons to Shazam or the Human Torch when I read the publication’s name. What kind of superpowers would the feared Entrepreneur Mom Now exhibit?)

Along with fellow Edmonton businessmom Nicola Doherty, Peters launched the Edmonton bureau of the site earlier this week. Christine Pilkington started the original site in Vancouver last year. She also hopes to operate in Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa and on Vancouver Island.

Peters, a former software engineer, argues that becoming a mother makes a woman more creative, which lends itself to conceiving of business ideas. “Motherhood brings out a woman’s creativity, in my opinion,” she says. “Prior to children I was very logical – it was about installing software and training end users. After children, I realized there was this whole other world that I hadn’t tapped into. I’ve talked to many mothers that feel that motherhood opened up an entire new part of their personality and their abilities.”

While the Edmonton branch of Entrepreneur Mom Now probably won’t challenge the New York Times for dominance of North American journalism any time soon, it’s tough not to wish both the publication and what it represents good fortune in the historically nearly-mom-free world of business.

The high-powered group that produced the 112-page study — led by former …

]]>It’s been nine months since former Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach’s Council for Economic Strategy tabled its report on how to address the province’s long-term economic challenges and opportunities.

The high-powered group that produced the 112-page study — led by former federal cabinet minister David Emerson — came up with some intriguing ideas on how to reduce Alberta’s reliance on energy royalties, while urging producers to seek new markets in Asia.

Events since then have only served to underline just how laudable those goals are. The Obama government’s foot-dragging on TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline, and the dramatic collapse of U.S. natural gas prices, shows just how risky it is for Alberta to so heavily rely on a single industry that serves a single customer.

Unfortunately, the council’s report seems to be gathering dust, like so many well-intentioned reports before it. Moreover, until the province is back in the black and firmly out of deficit, the report’s most contentious recommendation — removing non-renewable resources from general revenues — would seem to be a non-starter.

At an economic development summit in Edmonton earlier this week hosted by Deputy Premier Doug Horner, de Bever warned a crowd of business and government officials that the world could see huge changes in energy technology over the next 10 years, rendering alternatives like wind and solar far more cost-competitive with conventional energy sources.

While Alberta is in a strong financial position today, de Bever said the province needs to pursue technological innovation far more aggressively — especially in areas where it’s already strong, such as energy — if it wants to stay ahead of the curve. “You have to be hungry to pursue it,” he said, “and we’re not hungry enough.”

De Bever’s comments echoed those of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who recently told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland that Western countries have become fat and lazy.

“Is it the case that, in the developed world, too many of us have in fact become complacent about our prosperity?” Harper asked. Developed countries, he added, had taken wealth “as a given … assuming it is somehow the natural order of things,” resulting in societies that are focused primarily “on our services and entitlements.”

After spending time in South Korea on a couple of occasions over the past two years, I couldn’t agree more. Unless there’s a cultural sea-change in the West in coming years, and a much greater focus on wealth generation as well as fiscal responsibility, we’re in real danger of seeing our standard of living permanently reduced.

For his part, Horner sees this week’s economic summit as an attempt to keep the dialogue begun by the premier’s council going, while encouraging more collaboration on economic development initiatives between government agencies, educational institutions and the private sector.

“We wanted to pass the torch from the premier’s economic council … all of those things have got to come together at some point, so we stop doing reports and start taking steps to build our economy,” he said.

“We need to get a collaborative approach to the issues. So what does Alberta look like when we get to 10 million people? Are we doing the right things today to establish that 20-year framework that Leo (de Bever) was talking about, or David (Emerson) was talking about? If we don’t start working on some things today around productivity, and around making sure we don’t take things for granted, we’ll have a problem 10 or 15 years ahead.”

]]>http://blogs.edmontonjournal.com/2012/02/02/albertas-over-reliance-on-energy-revenues-spells-trouble-summit-hears/feed/0glamphierThe West is ‘in’, but for how long?http://blogs.edmontonjournal.com/2012/02/02/the-west-is-in-but-for-how-long/
http://blogs.edmontonjournal.com/2012/02/02/the-west-is-in-but-for-how-long/#commentsFri, 03 Feb 2012 00:02:50 +0000http://blogs.edmontonjournal.com/?p=107067Robert RoachFormer Reform Party leader Preston Manning recently wondered out loud if western alienation has been replaced by eastern alienation. Does this mean that the old battle cry of “the West wants in” is going to be replaced by …]]>Robert RoachFormer Reform Party leader Preston Manning recently wondered out loud if western alienation has been replaced by eastern alienation. Does this mean that the old battle cry of “the West wants in” is going to be replaced by “the East wants in?” The reality is that the East is still very much in and the West has barely one foot in the door.
The “in” we are talking about is the ability to meaningfully shape the decisions of the federal government and the sense that your region is a full-fledged partner in Confederation.
The “West wants in” makes sense because the region has been treated as — at best — a junior partner in Confederation by the powerbrokers in Ontario and Quebec. The Liberal Party under Pierre Trudeau ranged from being openly hostile to the region to simply ignoring it.
The Progressive Conservatives under Mulroney failed to live up to expectations. They came to be seen as wolves in sheep’s clothing who only seemed to care about the West when it was convenient.
The wealthy businessmen (and back then it was virtually all men) on Bay Street had their eyes firmly fixed on central Canada and saw the West as a frontier outpost to be exploited and then forgotten. (These are, of course, generalizations, but they capture the dominant zeitgeist of the period.)
One way for the West to get in is via party politics. If a western-based party forms the government, voila, the West is in. The Reform Party tried this but it was not popular enough in the rest of Canada to form a government.
Fast forward to the unification of the Canadian Alliance (nee Reform) and Progressive Conservative parties and the successive victories of the Harper Conservatives and we find ourselves living out this scenario. The Prime Minister is from Calgary and his government has a strong western bent. Western MPs on the government side of the House are not the only ones with a say (which was never the goal and nor should it be in a country as vast and diverse as Canada). Nonetheless, they are a strong enough force that the West is definitely “in” when it comes to regional influence in the House of Commons and the cabinet.
Running parallel to this change of electoral fortunes has been the rising oomph of the western Canadian economy within the national economy. Everyone from big wigs on Bay Street to everyday Canadians trying to save for their retirements either does or should pay close attention to what’s happening out west. The western economy is no longer the economic periphery to central Canada’s manufacturing heartland. In this sense, the West is in. But economic power is not a substitute for political power.
The reality is that the rest of Canada is far more populous than the West and, in turn, economic success does not guarantee that the region’s concerns and aspirations will be heeded by Ottawa.
As such, the West is “in” but only insofar as the current prime minister and a good chunk of his government are from the West. The problem is that this is a temporary state of affairs.
This points to another way for the West to get in and stay in. What we need is structural change that ensures that all regions of Canada have a permanent and powerful voice within the federal government itself regardless of which party forms the government.
Ontario and Quebec have the most democratic weight in the House of Commons because they have the most people. They are, by definition, “in.” But a good democracy is much more than mob rule. The will of the majority has to respect minority rights, which includes regional interests. It follows that respect for regional interests should not be dependent upon which party forms the government. It has to be hardwired into the system.
Relying as we do on provincial premiers to rattle the cage of the federal government from outside is a poor substitute for meaningful and permanent regional representation within the federal government itself. This is what the Senate is supposed to do but, for a whole bunch of reasons, doesn’t. Whether it is changes to the Senate or other reforms, something needs to be done to improve how the federation addresses regional interests.
As it stands, the West is in when it comes to having strong western representation on the government side of the House. How long will this last? No one knows, but history suggests that it won’t last forever. The next prime minister could be from Ontario, Quebec or Atlantic Canada and his or her geographic support may be concentrated outside the West. If this happens, the West may find itself ushered back “out” in a hurry.Robert Roach is vice president of research at the Canada West Foundation.]]>http://blogs.edmontonjournal.com/2012/02/02/the-west-is-in-but-for-how-long/feed/0evans4447Can we finally design our neighborhoods for the winter city that Edmonton is?http://blogs.edmontonjournal.com/2012/02/02/can-we-finally-design-our-neighborhoods-for-the-winter-city-that-edmonton-is/
http://blogs.edmontonjournal.com/2012/02/02/can-we-finally-design-our-neighborhoods-for-the-winter-city-that-edmonton-is/#commentsThu, 02 Feb 2012 23:58:50 +0000http://blogs.edmontonjournal.com/?p=107070The new design program at the University of Alberta is a crucial step in coming up with the right answers for Edmonton

Edmonton should be a more sensible city in the near future, a place where, for instance, all new …

]]>The new design program at the University of Alberta is a crucial step in coming up with the right answers for Edmonton

Edmonton should be a more sensible city in the near future, a place where, for instance, all new subdivisions will be designed to work in a part of the world that has abundant snowfall as opposed to abundant palm trees.
This new version of Edmonton will insist that neighbourhoods be built with sidewalks and boulevards. People will have a dedicated place to walk, lovely trees will line the roads, and there will also be a place to pile the snow in winter so it doesn’t cost us millions to have to haul away the snow in our efforts to keep the traffic flowing.

There’s been no architecture, landscape architecture or urban planning school in Edmonton since the 1930s. We are now the only major city in Canada that has not had one of the three, says Simon O’Byrne, Stantec’s head of urban planning.

But that is about to change. The University of Alberta is starting up a community planning program. The program begins next fall with four professors and 30 students, all of them working hard to master the creative art and difficult science of properly designing a city.

What exactly will these planners do?

“Planners design the world around us,” says acting program director Robert Summers. “They’re like the architects for cities. … They deal with all of these questions of development, such as where the LRT line should run or should we even have an LRT? Or should we build another ring road? What will be the impact of the new arena on the downtown? Is it something we should build or not? Should we build more development on the outskirts of town, or do more infill? The airport redevelopment? (They work on) all of these big questions, but also on a smaller scale, like how we should do our street-scraping, such as, should we have more boulevards to help us deal with snow removal?”

Several years ago, the 700-strong Alberta Professional Planning Institute approached the U of A to say Alberta’s town, cities and companies were chronically short of planning professionals, who generally make between $80,00 and $110,000 per year.

The City of Edmonton employs around 130 planners, while Fort McMurray-Wood Buffalo has 120 positions, but chronic staff shortages. A seasoned veteran in the Wood Buffalo office is someone is someone who has been there two years, O’Byrne says.

Community planners come here from outside the province, mainly from Ontario and B.C., but many only stick around a few years, get some experience and head home, O’Byrne says.

The planners who tend to stay are the ones who grew up here, then came home after getting their training elsewhere, says O’Byrne. He himself grew up in Garneau, but had to go to Manitoba to get a masters in city planning.

Most of Alberta’s planners are also Baby Boomers, who will be retiring soon and need replacing.

So this new program will help train workers. But will it help the rest of us?

“A city that aspires to be great, and a city of one million people in a greater region of two million, must have it’s own planning school,” O’Byrne says. “It’s got its own issues, its own concerns, its own architectural vernacular, its own unique characteristics, and we need a school where we have researchers, academics and students who are thoughtful people asking questions about how we make this place better.”

It is easy to make a great place in warm July, O’Byrne says. The challenge of doing the same in the winter requires five times the effort. But local people who have trained locally and are committed to the city will provide a boost. “We’ve got a vested stake in making sure Edmonton is a better place because we grew up here and we actually care about this place.”

Says Summers: “We need to develop our own model here in Alberta, for northern cities to address those issues. … It will help us get more of a local focus on things, as opposed to having to adapt and adopt ideas from elsewhere.”
The U of A experts can critique the city planners and/or private developers on major issues, says Coun. Don Iveson, another advocate for the program. “I’m excited about raising the level of debate about urban design and urban development in Edmonton, and having an independent group studying these things will just add to the discussion. It will improve the quality of everyone’s arguments.”

“As individuals, as academics, we’re free to give our honest opinions fully and freely,” Summers says. “We’re unencumbered by our positions, so we really can be an independent and relatively objective third party to provide opinions on such things as whether we have to bury the LRT line on Stony Plain Road or whether its’ fine being on top of Stony Plain Road.

“It would simply be more voices on board, offering differing opinions. They may be conflicting opinions, but there’s at least a sense they come from an independent party without self-interest in the process.”

Of course, a planning school is just one step, and it will take years for its promise to be realized, for winter-friendly planners to be trained and to rise up in organizations. The public will also have to be convinced in new Edmonton-developed, Edmonton-specific town and city designs.

So this is just one step, but it’s also a crucial one. We will need all the help we can get in rethinking, reworking and redeveloping this largely unwalkable city of insular streets and car-dependent neighbourhoods. Young planners and young profs with deep, local roots and wide-ranging new ideas will help show the way.

]]>http://blogs.edmontonjournal.com/2012/02/02/can-we-finally-design-our-neighborhoods-for-the-winter-city-that-edmonton-is/feed/0davidstaplesedmontonLow savings rate ominous cloud on horizonhttp://blogs.edmontonjournal.com/2012/02/02/low-savings-rate-ominous-cloud-on-horizon/
http://blogs.edmontonjournal.com/2012/02/02/low-savings-rate-ominous-cloud-on-horizon/#commentsThu, 02 Feb 2012 23:46:43 +0000http://blogs.edmontonjournal.com/?p=107060Will Van’t VeldContinued growth in household spending is expected to help power the Canadian economy through another turbulent year of economic uncertainty. It’s pretty evident that much of this growth is being driven by exceedingly cheap credit, but it …]]>Will Van’t VeldContinued growth in household spending is expected to help power the Canadian economy through another turbulent year of economic uncertainty. It’s pretty evident that much of this growth is being driven by exceedingly cheap credit, but it should be pointed out that this is part of a longer term trend in which Canadian households have been saving less and less.
}Canadian households used to have a reputation for being savers first, spenders second (even if governments tended to run deficits). Households saved in the 1980s up to 15 per cent of their income, but by the early 1990s this dropped below 10 per cent and finally bottomed out at 2.1 per cent in 2005. Since 2005 the savings rate has rebounded slightly (4.8 per cent in 2010) but it still appears as though Canadians are now spenders first and savers second.
The trend first started raising eyebrows over a decade ago. Back in 2000 Gilles Berubé and Denis Coté, writing a research paper for the Bank of Canada, wrote about why the personal savings rate was on the decline. The authors centred on real interest rates, expected inflation, net worth and government debt.
The impact of low interest rates on savings is somewhat intuitive, as low rates provide little incentive to save. A more interesting determinant, however, is inflation, which influences the savings behaviour of households because it affects the real value of accumulated savings (as well as future investments). Another way inflation influences savings is through its impact on economic uncertainty and risk.
Unexpected inflation helps borrowers repay debts issued at fixed rates because each dollar borrowed is worth more than each dollar paid back. In essence, inflation transfers wealth from savers to borrowers and as a result households will want to compensate by saving even more to ensure they have sufficient future savings. Inflation can cause uncertainty and this leads households to save more, just to be on the safe side.
One of the big reasons the savings rate fell, it stands to reason, is because the Bank of Canada really began to tackle inflation in the early ‘90s, and has kept it under control ever since. But this still doesn’t explain why the savings rate continued to plummet more than a decade after the new inflation policy was introduced.
One hypothesis is that the housing boom helped push savings rates even lower. The logic goes like this: households don’t think that they need to save more because the value of their property appreciated sufficiently for them to be happy with the position of their net wealth. In 2000 Berube and Cote were more interested in stock market wealth, given the dotcom bubble that was occurring at the time, but it’s easy to see why this same logic extends to housing.
The lower household savings rate has an important implication: the net flow of domestic funds available for investment declines. At current saving rates, Canadian households make available about $60 billion in new investable funds; this is slightly higher than the borrowing needs of the federal government in 2010. It follows that the only way private and public borrowing can be fully accommodated at a given interest rate is through foreign borrowing (in 2010 this consisted of $50 billion in new borrowing plus $10 billion in reinvested foreign corporate earnings).
Much of the decade long rise in home prices and investment in that sector was fuelled by rising incomes and easier access to credit, but at the end of the day Canada was a net creditor to the world. The situation has flipped, thanks largely to public sector deficits, and Canada is now a rather large net borrower and housing investment is still going strong. For another couple years this might work out, but longer term this is not a healthy situation to be in.Will Van’t Veld is an economist with ATB Financial.]]>http://blogs.edmontonjournal.com/2012/02/02/low-savings-rate-ominous-cloud-on-horizon/feed/0evans4447Skiing with a Couple of 70 Year Old Teenagershttp://blogs.edmontonjournal.com/2012/02/02/skiing-with-a-couple-of-70-year-old-teenagers/
http://blogs.edmontonjournal.com/2012/02/02/skiing-with-a-couple-of-70-year-old-teenagers/#commentsThu, 02 Feb 2012 23:38:32 +0000http://postmediaedmonton.wordpress.com/?p=106969

I first met Fernand in the day lodge at Red Mountain at 8:30 am. He was greeting almost everyone who walked by. I sat down and started buckling up my boots when he asked if I had skied …

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Photo by: Colin Zeke Cathrea

I first met Fernand in the day lodge at Red Mountain at 8:30 am. He was greeting almost everyone who walked by. I sat down and started buckling up my boots when he asked if I had skied Red Mountain before. I told him the last time I was here was when I was racing on the Pacific Western Pro Tour in 1984. He pointed to the bar upstairs and said there was a couple of photos on the wall up there I should check out. Wandering into the Rafters bar I spied a couple of great shots of racers flying over the pro-bumps on our skinny GS skis.

Photo by Colin "Zeke" Cathrea

Fernand asked if I wanted a guided tour of the mountain and I accepted immediately. A lot had changed from the last time I was here. This would turn out to be one great day.

I noticed Fernand was decked out from head to toe in high-end gear. Arc’Teryx clothing, Head boots and goggles, and a thin athletic frame to wear it on. He stands around 6 feet, and probably weighs around 150 pounds soaking wet. Fernand is 72 years young.

We were soon at the top of the Paradise Chair and he was cruising at decent speeds carving big wide turns effortlessly. Riding up the chair we talked about where he was from and how he landed in Rossland. Originally from the coast, he lives down the road in Grand Forks during the spring, summer, and fall and rents a place in Rossland every winter so he can ski daily. He walks the 5 kilometers to the hill where his equipment is stored in the ski lockers. His wide rockered skis are only a year old, but they are delaminating from “over-use”. Everywhere we went on the mountain he knew the people’s names. He was constantly reaching into his pack and pockets pulling out fruit and treats for the lifties and patrollers. We’ve agreed to go fly fishing this summer just below his house that’s right on the Kettle River.

My second senior citizen teenager is named Angela. She runs the best B&B in Rossland and skis like the wind. She calls it “crushing powder” and at 65 she’s hard to keep up with. We met at the bottom of the Red Chair where she told me I was in for a treat. She said she was going to take me to couple of “hidden gems” not many people from outside Rossland knew about. I followed as she floated above the chopped up powder into the black-diamond trees off of Red Mountain. Our first stop was one of the privately owned cabins built just outside the ski area boundary called “The Office”. Then it was off to The Crystal Cave, an old mining shaft that is drilled and blasted into the side of the mountain. Angela popped her skis off and dropped into the shaft yelling “Hey Bear!” I slid down a 10 foot snow chute after her.

"Angela" Photo by Colin Cathrea

Following somewhat reluctantly I was soon a few hundred feet into the blackness of the cave. “This is a different kind of blackness, isn’t it Zeke?” she quipped as we stood hunched over. The roof of the cave was only about 4 feet high. We were soon outside again and cruising the glades as she whooped and smiled all the way down. “You’re not a bad skier for a racer” she smiled.

Cave Spotting - Photo by Cathrea

It’s such a treat to meet people who change your perception of the world, and it was a pleasure to experience these two wonderful “teenagers” living life to the fullest. I hope I have the health, stamina, and beautiful outlook on life these two do when I’m in my seventies.